dangeraaron10

Now this is a change I can get behind! I've been wanting a "Power Armor" powerset, something akin to Ironman for quite some time. Sure, Energy Blast sorta does this but wrist-mounted Beam Rifle attacks sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered on that concept. I'd absolutely use Beam Rifle if we got such animation options.

While I do appreciate the homework done on this, we have to remember that Paragon City is an alternate reality to our own. Being an established metropolitan city for many years will likely heavily change the immigration landscape compared to the Rhode Island of our reality. I'm not saying that Chinese or generic "Asian" architecture is the limit of different cultural possibilities, but I took a look at Paragon Wiki and here's a bit of information about the Tsoo, the Hong Kong born Triad, and mention of several types of Asian minorities that have been struggling against both of the aforementioned groups: "The Tsoo emerged on the scene in the late 1990s as a small but unified bunch under the leadership of Tub Ci, a brutal and calculating drug lord recently released from prison. Tub Ci claimed to have found his spirituality in prison – but it was the legacy of a warlord – and he named his group after a word that he defined as “the destroyers.” Independence Port and Talos Island were under the thumb of Hong Kong-born Triads at the time, who harshly exploited other Asian minorities in the area, but this wouldn’t last for much longer. Tub Ci claimed he could no longer see his people, the Hmong, suffer; and while there was some truth to his outrage over the hardships they faced beneath the Triads he was certainly not motivated by altruism. Tub Ci’s ambitions were grand, and his Tsoo were a fearsome lot, heavily inscribed with mystical tattoos that gave them super-powered abilities. His lieutenants, the cruel sorcerers, were his most trusted brothers, many of whom had spent time with Tub Ci in prison. And when their martial arts, gun and sword play, and magics were not enough, Tub Ci showed his sorcerers how to reinforce their ranks with ghostly warriors they claimed as their literal ancestors. They broke the backs of the ruling Triads and slipped into power. The Tsoo wanted nothing less than to control all of the drug trade and protection rackets in Paragon City. However, the Rikti War forced them into the simple task of survival for a time. They refused to aid the heroes, and they certainly would never help another gang, but they did do what they could for the people under their “protection.” When the war finally ended, Tub Ci consolidated his forces in the regions of Talos Island, Independence Port, and Steel Canyon. They basically own the drug business, gambling dens, and protection racket in those areas. They celebrate their domination regularly, with loud, raucous parties held throughout the month. These parties are usually held in abandoned warehouses or empty lots in bad neighborhoods – deep within Tsoo territory. Sometimes the parties devolve into blood sports, where both men and women participate in no-holds-barred scraps, earning prestige and glory among the streets. Offering a heady mix of drugs, flesh, and violence, the Tsoo gatherings act as magnets for those drawn to their dark lifestyle, and Tub Ci craftily uses them as a constant “recruitment drive” to bolster his ranks." https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Tsoo So we do know from the lore that various Asian groups, primarily Chinese, have had a significant presence in Paragon City since prior to the 1990's. I feel like there's precedent. Edit: In this case, I think Independence Port and/or Talos Island would be a good place for such a revamped area.

There is a lot of room for development in Paragon City. Having been wracked by war between various criminal factions and Paragon's heroes and police, much of the city is actually in total ruin! Maybe one day if the Homecoming team has the manpower, time, and possibly the legitimacy, they can set to work on an Issue that sees parts of Paragon City rebuilt. And while they're already focused on asset creation, we might see different styles of architecture based on who's putting in the work and footing the bill to rebuild. And in such a case there's definitely room for something resembling Chinatown, though I imagine new missions in the area would likely be dealing with Tsoo that want to control the new neighborhood as they done with other Asian groups under the Triad in the past.

You're probably right. Personally I think the options for the different Beast categories is fairly anemic as it is (I could go for some horns and not just ears, for instance), but I thought having larger tails would be a big step in the right direction. If it's easier to just make new assets then that is definitely the route they should go.

Electric cord tails would be pretty neat! I'd also love to go the Mechagodzilla route and have a full on mechanical tail. I figured taking existing tails and making scaled up copies would be the most feasible route. Just kinda weird to have a huge monster character and a tiny tail!

Yes, and I hope the negotiations go well. I just wish they kept ignoring it and I fear negotiations could go south at any time. Let me rephrase, being able to keep HC as is with NCSoft's approval is the best we can hope for. But HC being as is with NCSoft ignoring it outright would have also been good.

Voltaic Sentinel too, for that matter. Even if most people don't take it, it'd be great not to re-summon it every minute since, at least according to Mids, has a 60 second duration and a 60 second cooldown. I'm reading that right, aren't I? Does the cooldown begin after the Sentinel despawns or as soon as it is activated?

The best we can hope for is the CoH private servers remain stable on the lower end of population and NCSoft continues to ignore the servers since the source code is out in the wild. Hell would freeze over before NCSoft would sell the IP (at a reasonable price), but then, they haven't quashed any servers yet so they managed to surprise me once already. All I really want is the current status quo to be maintained. We got it good here on Homecoming with the volunteer devs continuing on balancing and improving the game over time, and all I ask for is the servers to stay online.

Maybe the Civilian AT can have an Inherent that increases benefits of Day Jobs. They don't have superhero/villain work to distract them from their careers.

That's my issue. I prefer being heroic than being really evil and try to go out of my way of doing the super heinous stuff on redside. Unless I'm playing a character is 100% an Arachnos fanboy, I usually go with my old friend Matthew Burke. I wish there was more Matthew Burkes. I like being a thorn in the side of everyone. So during those times I want to play a villain, redside sorta drops the ball on the most satisfying part of being a villain; freedom. Even cleverly wording contract missions to make you feel like you're in control would help. The best part about the Rogue Isles, to me, is Tip Missions and the gradual conversion from Villain to Rogue and either staying Rogue or doing a full Heel-Face Turn. I really need to start running goldside because, as much as I like blueside, I could use some variety. But then, I always liked Emperor Cole and the Loyalists more than Lord Recluse and Arachnos.

I agree. These are positive quality of life changes for MM for all game modes and should go live as soon as possible (assuming they work as intended on the test server). Number shifting can be done later. These have been AI improvements MM players have been asking for since forever back on live and again here on HC, often being told in broadcast it'd be too difficult or impossible because of the game's spaghetti code. That and I really want Mercs to be usable T_T

Has anyone been able to test these changes out with Mercenaries? Does it make them more usable? They're one of my favorite Pet powers which are, sadly, bottom of the barrel on Live.

I'd be all over this. I'd much rather slot one Overwhelming Force and take care of my KB woes than to clog up my slots with Sudden Acceleration. I like the idea of the latter existing for those that want to cherry pick which powers do KB and which do KD.

If I didn't always try to build for concept first, I'd pick Fly every time. "It's the slowest!" I just fly upwards, pick a direction, and grab a drink. Or I might want to do some sightseeing around various zones and Fly helps me do that. I don't have the patience for Teleport and would never use it outside of the one baked into Mystic Flight or for Warshade (and then I stop using Shadow Step immediately upon receiving squid form and just use that for transportation). Same for Super Speed. My Savage/Rad Brute doesn't have wings and his abilities don't let him defy gravity, so he uses a combination of Beast Run and Jump Pack to get around. I'd love a variety of travel powers on my characters if it matched their concept. But there's times I just say screw it and pop a Jet Pack. The Raptor model isn't all that expensive from the P2W vendor, just 5k inf for a half hour of use time (it doesn't tick down when not in use, to my knowledge) Fly was, is, and always will be my favorite travel power. If only because winged heroes are cool and flying is not only superheroic but convenient as hell. Stopping in to signal boost that, yes, I like it.

Yes, to make it clear, the "Playstyle" tab does not have any mechanical influence over any given AT. It's simply a way to filter out different ATs if the player has a particular playstyle in mind. So if you pick "Tank" it'll filter out ATs that don't have much of a tanking ability to speak of. By clicking off of or not selecting anything in "Playstyle" going over to the "Archetype" tab displays all ATs.

I cannot wait to see these changes go live. Can't wait to see how this changes MM gameplay across the various pet powers. Maybe this is my opportunity to make that Bots/Traps character I've been wanting. I might make a couple MMs after these changes!

One type of costume part I appreciated being added to CoH at a certain point was tails not only being separated from belts, but having animated versions of tails that used to be completely static. While I appreciate having them for my monster characters, I wish they were larger as they're hardly noticeable at a distance or in the heat of combat. From what I can tell, there's a great deal of room between the tail's lowest point and a flat surface, and I imagine taking each animated tail and adding a version that was simply scaled up just before it would clip into the ground would be pretty rad. I'm not a programmer or 3D artist myself, but I think it wouldn't be terribly complex to make copies of each animated tail, scale it up evenly in each dimension (to prevent stretching on the textures) for a much more noticeable part of your costume. Using the Animated - Reptile Tail as a baseline, since it would have the least amount of area to get scaled up before clipping into the ground. I guess calling it [Animated - Large [Insert Animal Type] Tail], in this case [Animated - Large Reptile Tail]. Please excuse my terrible ghetto image editing. I feel like this is as large as the tail can get if scaled up evenly without clipping into the ground while running. Clipping with Capes and Trenchcoats is to be expected as the normal tails also clip into Capes and Trenchcoats.

I think Captain Powerhouse mentioned in the Tanker thread that he considered doing just this, when concern was brought up about a possible T1 and T2 power swap in a Tanker's secondary. Notably it would force Fiery Melee Tankers to use a Sword, which I personally feel is very restrictive in character concepts. Putting my stamp of approval on this (though in the end I gave up making Fiery Melee work and instead going with Savage Melee)

Always love looking at your builds. I don't see Build Up in there. Is it not all that useful for a Tanker?

Personally, I'd like to see several choices for Mastermind pet "skins". Thugs seem to randomly change between preset skins on each summon. I wish we could opt to select which skins we want in the Power Customization menu and those pets stick with those skins, and then add more skins. That way you can select from ingame gangs and mobs, and maybe even have girl henchman if you pick Skulls. Same with Robots possibly being replaced by Clockwork or different types of animals for Beasts. This I feel would not be as resource intensive as loading in MM minions with individually selectable costumes but the ability to pick between 5-6 preset skins.

I appreciate it! Not sure what Tanker I'll end up playing but Rad/Fire sounds pretty cool.

Fire Breath is part of the theme, so that one I'm keeping. Also I'm building for a No-Swords character, here. So while Fire Sword Circle is a great ability mechanically, it doesn't fit the concept at all. I understand this isn't ideal, but I build for theme first and then min/max after the fact. One thing I did overlook is Air Superiority, which would be a good idea for someone who generally leans towards Fly/Hover. Thank you. Though I do love and plan to take every power in Radiation Armor. Great resists as well as the team heal and the debuffs.

I'd like to throw out a suggestion for new costume pieces, being larger tails. Even if it's just the current animated ones we have, but just scaled up to be much bigger. I appreciate the ones we have but they're sometimes hard to notice. I'd also like to see more customization to Beast Heads. Would it be too much to ask to have the "Ears" subsection be changed to "Features" that also includes fins and horns?

I'm that guy that tends to love Epic Power Pools in most cases (though some clearly more than others). Having Epic Power Pools be available much sooner would help me realize a lot of character concepts much earlier. Does my Melee character need those Laser Eye Beams? Probably not, but I like having them around. For fun and flavor. Same with a Dominator concept that's a Final Fantasy Black Mage that uses Fire, Ice, and Thunder (Elec Control/Fire Assault/Ice Mastery). It'd be nice to realize the Tri-Element concept earlier in the leveling experience. I like the idea.

Hey all. I've been bouncing around different character concepts and ATs for a while now, not really finding something I genuinely love to play. Lately I've been getting really interested in the recent talks about Tankers, and not only is it fun to not die, I'm interested in how their AoE is going to be improved even further soon. A character concept I've been trying to make work makes use of either Breath of Fire or Fire Breath, which tends to be skipped in almost every Fire build on every AT, except Tanker. Unless I'm mistaken, Breath of Fire will benefit from the AoE increase being tossed around in the Beta servers right now. So this new character concept I have in mind has a few key (non negotiable) thematic powers, being Breath of Fire and Laser Beam Eyes. I'm going for an old-timey Kaiju inspired character. I don't really care for the power effects of Fiery Aura and understand that it trades defense for damage. I like the idea of Radiation Armor having a few AoE attacks while also having some good resistance. Aside from the powers mentioned earlier I'm pretty flexible in terms of Power Pools and specific power choices. Travel power wise, my preference is almost always Flight. I almost always take Hasten in every build as, from what I can tell, every build benefits from it. Taking Fighting is a no-brainer as well, especially for Rad Armor, which can benefit from Weave's +DEF (from what I can tell on Pines, Rad is a primarily Resistance oriented set with little native Defense). I'd love to give a Rad/Fire/Energy Tanker with a Mutation origin a try, so I'm wondering if any Tanker experts have any tips? I like the damage type variety it outputs and its AoE potential without being as frail as Fiery Aura. I'm concerned about the lack of Defense. I'm sure IOs will be pivotal in meeting those softcaps. Edit: To clarify, this build isn't meant specifically for efficient farming, but all-purpose gameplay including solo and team play.